Cloud Platforms Integration Framework

Abstract

In this report, an attempt is made to develop an extensive, scalable middleware framework solution named Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) to port different cloud platforms which facilitate consumer applications to utilize cloud based resources from different cloud platforms as required. The ultimate goal of this solution is to reduce the development and long-term maintenance cost when an application needs to connect to multiple cloud platforms or either migrating to a different cloud platform. Primary focus of CPIF solution is to implement a generic framework by utilizing the plug-in architecture pattern. It acts as a cloud platforms independent solution which provides a flexibility to implement cloud platform dependent communication channels as pluggable components with respective integration technologies. In future this framework facilitates an option of porting a new cloud technology by developing it as a new plug-in component. CPIF solution consumes cloud based services by using generic set of interfaces where any application could directly integrate with it rather concerning about its integration mechanism. Therefore, in future, user should be able to switch into different cloud technologies with minimal configuration changes due to use of plug-in architecture pattern without any implementation changes. In addition to that, CPIF solution deploys as a Windows Service. Therefore, it can be independently hosted in a different machine and completely decouple with the consumer application. Also it provides an opportunity to integrate any consumer application which is implemented using any other technologies (E.g. Java, PHP, etc). CPIF solution is implemented using Microsoft .NET related technologies. (.NET Framework 4.5). CPIF solution implements the communication channels for the cloud based resources such as Microsoft Azure Queue and Blob storages and similarly Amazon Web Services Simple Queue Storage and S3 Bucket in order to efficiently transfer different sizes of data. Also CPIF solution can be easily extended to support any other cloud platform by following its plug-in component design. This solution is strictly evaluated for Microsoft Azure cloud platform by executing wide range of test cases which includes functional and non-functional test cases. The evaluation results summaries the strength and weakness of the CPIF solution.